Q&A With Todd Hoffman from the hit show “Gold Rush”

Q&A with Todd Hoffman From Gold Rush

Gold Rush is Discovery Channel’s #1 show and continues to dominate all of TV among men. For 7 consecutive weeks it’s remained #1 on all of television among men. Gold Rush consistently outperforms every broadcast program among men and continues to bring in massive ratings. One of our very own writers, Leif Potter recently had the chance to interview Todd Hoffman about the importance of family in his operation.

Interview Conducted by Leif Potter

Family Review Guide: Hi Todd. It’s a pleasure to meet you. I am a big fan and I have a couple of questions that myself and our fans would like to ask you.

Todd: Go for it.

Family Review Guide: The big one from a lot of the ladies is, How does the mining season affect your family?

Todd: It brings us closer together because we’re all living in a little community, you know, like living in little trailers, and stuff. We have a pretty strong faith and pride so we’re able to kind of lean on that when we’re up there. You don’t have the distractions that you have in the city so, you know, it’s actually not bad. Could be worse, I’ll say that.

Family Review Guide: You’ve got friends, you’ve got family, and you’ve got a bunch of heavy iron. Wherever there’s gold there is faith, and not necessarily in that order.

Todd: You got it, you got it. Gold. We got our God, we got our families and you know it is pretty kick-ass. I’m not going to lie to you, it’s not a bad gig.

Family Review Guide: You went through a lot in Guyana. I mean that that was a crazy one.

Todd: That was horrible, but the thing is, is that here’s the cool part. We want more family in the show and Discovery has gave us the green light. They finally realized that there’s a big longing to watch families, you know, go about how they do stuff so it’s coming.

Family Review Guide: Go about surviving and win as a family.

Todd: Exactly, it’s true. I think we’re going to have more family oriented situations up there.

Family Review Guide: That’s good. Personally I see that, you know– like the Schnables group and the Vikings with their massive operation now it’s getting in toward kind of a commercial mining operation instead of the, you know, the family like you guys have more of, and I think that that’s more interesting. Interesting to fans is seeing that family dynamic more than, “Oh wow, here’s a giant gold mining operation.”

Todd: Yeah. Tony Beets has been mining there for, wow, 30, 40 years and Parker’s dad, people have noticed he’s got a huge gold mine. He grew up on a gold mine. I grew up in the city, you know? And I rely on my faith, my family and when you get a big operation like that it starts to get a little bit– it’s hard to identify with too big of an operation when you’re, you know– when really that’s really out of reach for the average person. So, what we’re doing is showing what is in reach, you know, and that is you can work with your family, and you can go up there and do a little mining, you know? You can make it that way.

Family Review Guide: Yeah. I like the way you guys started. And the behemoth– the behemoth that he has, he’s trying to put that dredge together. That is just his whole show this season, seems like.

Todd: What do you think about that?

Family Review Guide: It’s a monster. It gets running and it actually works, you know, it’ll be the finale celebration but if it doesn’t it’s a season he’s spent building a big machine.

Todd: Yeah. Me and Dave, we kind of have our questions about that because you still have to strip in front of it, you know? You can’t just take that dredge and it’s not the only piece of equipment that you need. You really got to move some overburden before you can bring that in so I’m kind of wondering if Tony’s really thought this out very good.

Family Review Guide: Yeah.

Todd: We’ll find out.

Family Review Guide: It looks like with the engineering and the disassembly and re-assembly, there’s not a lot of thought going into it. It looks like it’s a little bit– a little cowboyish. You know, because he’s doing things in the wrong sequences a couple times as part of the show. I don’t know if that’s part of the show to add drama.

Todd: I know he’s almost squished his kid about four times. One of his kids.

Family Review Guide: And we don’t want any of that drama out there in TV world.

Family Review Guide: Yeah, looking forward to it myself. That’s in a week and a half away.

Todd: Yeah.

Family Review Guide: So do you guys think you’re coming back for another season or it sounds like you’re ramping up from everything you’ve said so far?

Todd: I think we’re going to be back buddy, I think you know, like, I can’t– I can’t, you know, be for sure but we’re leaning that direction and I can at least say that.

Family Review Guide: That’s awesome. And are you hitting your 1000 ounce goal?

Todd: You’re going to have to find out, man.

Family Review Guide: [laughing] Alright no spoilers.

Todd: Pretty close. We’re pretty close to give up now, you know what I mean?

Family Review Guide: Yeah, that was the hard part of Guyana, it was like, you know, you spent your whole season doing nothing but spending money. So that had to have been hard.

Todd: It was horrible. You know what though, I had to learn some things and God taught us some things during that whole time. I can’t say that it wasn’t a crucial part of our journey.

Family Review Guide: Well, you learn from it, right?

Todd: We did. We learned from it and, you know– as far as us getting ourselves (inaudible) , there’s going to be a little bit of a curveball coming at you buddy. I can’t go into it any deeper than that.

Family Review Guide: That’s okay. We’ll take your curve ball. They make good TV.

Family Review Guide: A couple– a couple of people had said this question. You would do a little bit more of mining by the seat of your pants, right? The other guys do a lot of test drills, test holes, before they actually start mining an area.” What’s your philosophy on that?

Todd: I thought there is nobody up there this year that’s got more drill holes than me.

Family Review Guide: Really? Okay.

Todd: I got $1.2 million dollars worth of drill holes that I– that’s why I leased the claim for 20%. So, the area that Dave wanted to strip at the beginning was too tough, but I did have drill holes that weren’t as good, but I at least knew there was gold there, right?

Family Review Guide: Right.

Todd: So we’re mining an area that I know that there’s gold there. It’s not as good as where we were trying to get to, but we are on some attainable gold for sure.

Family Review Guide: Yeah. You had frozen ground problems in the beginning, right?

Todd: Yeah, yeah. Really bad. That was really rough but you’ll see that there’s something that happens with that too. We didn’t– that’s– you know, we got some more information coming on that too. You’re going to dig that.

Family Review Guide: Yeah? Almost everyone asks the same question, “How is your dad doing?”

Todd: And so like, “My back hurts man” but he’s just so tough and he doesn’t want to get left out. He just loves it. So yeah, man, he’s still good. I think you’re going to see more of him next year, you know? I think– we’re talking more about it. He needs– we need to get back to the basics, right?

Family Review Guide: Yeah. I think it’s– you know it’s going the other way. It’s going back to it as, you know, I think where you guys got all your ratings and all your audience from. That’s just my personal opinion. That’s what I fell in love with.

Todd: Yeah.

Family Review Guide: That’s great. I had a wild question. What do you guys think about all the mining that they’re talking about doing on asteroids here soon?

Todd: As soon as they’ve got it figured out I think we’ll be one of the first– we’ll put our peg on a reality show up there.

Family Review Guide: [laughing] mining in space.

Todd: Yeah. I think I’m going to figure out mining in the North first, you know? But, yeah. If they can get gold and something up there, that would be incredible. I’d love it.

Family Review Guide: Well, they’re saying from the science behind it it’s there, it’s just a matter of the cost of getting there.

Todd: Wow.

Todd: You got any off the wall questions, man? Feel free.

Family Review Guide: That was one of the more off the wall ones that I had. You know, a lot of it is just centered on, you know, the family unit and a lot of the questions on that, the faith that keeps you guys going. I mean, you have to have some faith with what your Christian belief– to get you through last season and every day when you’re trying to, you know, tally up a pile of gold and it’s not there. You know, you guys are like hurt.

Family Review Guide: Yeah. The pain though is what brings people

Todd: Let me tell you about the family. The family’s under attack. The family is under attack, especially Christian family. So, you’ve have terrorism. You have terrorists that want to kill us, okay? We have inflation, okay? There’s inflation that is– our families go in to buy groceries at the store and you get about half as much as we used to get five, 10 years ago. So we’re under attack financially, we’re under attack spiritually and we’re under attack socially because there’s so much crap, pornography. Our kids are under attack. The availability to junk and drugs and pornography to our children is a hundred times fold than we had to deal with. We didn’t have the internet popping in our face all the time. So basically the family’s under attack and if you’re smart you’ll start to circle the freaking wagons and really the men have to step up with your families and be leaders. If not, your family’s probably going to get decimated like about 50% of them that happens out there and then you’ll leave a bunch of broken kids and broken relationships. And as a whole, our country is becoming broken because of the breakdown of the family. So if we can keep a– strong families, we have a chance to continue and to build America. If not, America is going to go into a severe decline– continue into a severe decline that I’m starting to see now. I mean, that’s my soapbox. That’s my two cents. Take it for what it is, you know?

Family Review Guide: Yeah. What do you think is really causing that and how do you think the world will solve it?

Todd: I think– I don’t know– step one, men have to stay– you know ,to be faithful with their wives. They need to live for something, you know, not– they can’t be so selfish– they have to live for something beyond themselves, you know? The ladies– the women need to respect their husbands– you know, when they come through the door from a job that they probably don’t like, you know, they need to be thankful and grateful for that man and show him respect. A lot of men run on respect. A lot of women don’t feel loved. A lot of it is because they’re not respecting their husbands. You know, love and respect, you know? I think a lot of it comes down to those two words. With us, we have a faith, you know a faith in Jesus Christ, and we’re required to love our wives and, you know, there’s a whole map set out in the bible on how to do this stuff. The hard part is actually doing it, you know? You can read about it, talk about it but in the end doing it’s a whole ‘nother, you know, situation so.

Family Review Guide: Yeah, so it’s a constant battle. My wife and I, we’ve been together for 20 years and it’s a constant create, you know, the moment either party stops creating on that relationship and the family, that’s when you see those, you know “I can’t believe they broke up,” “I can’t believe they divorced,” stories of “we thought they were so good.” So they just stop creating on their marriage and their relationship and their faith.

Todd: Yeah, you can’t stop. You can’t stop working at it.

Family Review Guide: Todd, it was a pleasure. Thank you very much for taking the time to talk with us.

Todd: Thank you.

Family Review Guide: And best of luck, find some big ones man.

Todd: Yeah we need some big, big nuggets, and big cleanups man.

Family Review Guide: Bye

Todd: Bye

About Leif Potter: A lifelong resident of Orange County CA, Leif Potter is a professional Mortgage banker and family man with 2 children

Like this interview? See our other Discovery Show Interview of “The Deadliest Catch” with Johnathan Hillstrand and Wild Bill